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can botanist who will reduce to practical results a series of 
observations requiring a lifetime to acquire. 
In view of the extent of our subject, the treatise before us 
can be regarded as no more than a brief and meagre account 
of some of the few and more prominent species which might 
occur to a beginner in such districts of England as are fer- 
tile in species. But it is to be regretted that the American 
press is not as generous in contributions to knowledge in 
the various departments of natural history as is that of the 
mother country. Just such a cheap and prettily illustrated 
treatise, which should be strictly American, would do a 
great service, and would be what many young persons need. 
There seems no good reason why the fantastic and gorgeous 
creations of the fungi, which deck our woods and spring up 
around our dwellings, or are found in our pastures, should 
not be studied and as well known to the young, as are the 
blue flowers of the Hepatica, or the rosy corols of the May- 
flower, or the first Violets and the Saxifrage and Columbines, 
which annually awaken a vernal zeal for botany, but whic 
faints and fades away on the coming heats of June, or the 
sultry days of August. Who has not admired the Agarics 
and Boleti and Clavarias in the pine woods in September, 
and who has not longed to know something more of them, to 
learn their names, their good or bad qualities, their uses or 
a ds? The brilliant scarlet disk of a Peziza, starting into 
life from beneath the dead leaves of a Pennsylvania wood, 
takes me back now to the vicinity of Pittsburgh, where years 
âgo I searched for the Erigenia, the first blossom of the spring 
there; and there is no autumn which does not thrill me with 
à new life as I see the shady paths and the wet spots of Aah 
op so bravely adorned with these fugitive and fugacious 
orms of vegetation. 
oi excitement which spurs on many a student in natural 
7 k ry, that he may be the possible finder of a new species, 
comcident with the study of the fungi. Spots most 
liar to the eye, often are found producing kinds either _ 
